Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles

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Firefox stores your personal data, such as bookmarks, passwords and extensions, in a profile folder on your computer, in a location separate from the Firefox program. This article explains how to back up your profile, restore it, or move your profile to a new location or computer.

Note:The Refresh Firefox feature creates an Old Firefox Data folder on your desktop, which contains a backup of your old profile folder and its contents. If you recently refreshed Firefox and still have this folder, you already have a complete profile backup.

Right-clickHold down the Ctrl key while you click on your profile folder (e.g. xxxxxxxx.default), and select Copy.

Right-clickHold down the Ctrl key while you click the backup location (e.g. a USB-stick or a blank CD-RW disc), and select Paste item.

Restoring a profile backup

Click the menu button
and then click ExitQuit
.

Click the Firefox menu
, then click Exit.Click the Firefox menu at the top of the screen, then click Quit Firefox.Click the Firefox menu
, then click Quit.

If your existing profile folder and profile backup folder have the same name, simply replace the existing profile folder with the profile backup, then start Firefox.

Important: The profile folder names must match exactly for this to work, including the random string of 8 characters. If the names do not match or if you are restoring a backup to a different location, follow the steps below.

Restoring to a different location

If the profile folder names do not match or if you want to move or restore a profile to a different location, do the following:

Completely close Firefox:

Click the menu button
and then click ExitQuit
.

Click the Firefox menu
, then click Exit.Click the Firefox menu at the top of the screen, then click Quit Firefox.Click the Firefox menu
, then click Quit.